Sporting forward with 145 games sentenced, lashes out: Get this sword off my head | OneFootball

João Vieira Pinto said this Tuesday, November 25, during the trial of Operation Lex, that he felt a "brutal outrage" when he learned that a case in which he was ultimately convicted had not been regularly distributed in the Lisbon Court of Appeal.

The case involves qualified tax fraud related to a signing bonus worth 4.2 million euros paid into an overseas account, concerning the transfer to Sporting in the year 2000 (Recall the change HERE): "What can a citizen do? You feel a brutal outrage. I have been in this process for 25 years. I just ask to have this sword removed from my head," said the former lion.

José Veiga (defendant), former president Luís Duque, and former Sporting SAD administrator Rui Meireles were convicted in 2012 in the first instance, but the following year, the Lisbon Court of Appeal decided that the former football player was the only one guilty, punishing him with a suspended sentence and the payment of compensation of more than half a million euros for qualified tax fraud.

Admitting that he does not know if the judge in question was somehow influenced, João Vieira Pinto insisted that the magistrate should have recused himself when he received the case for the second time: "Any citizen has the right to have their case decided by an impartial judge who respects the law, and I did not have that opportunity to defend myself," he emphasized.

The Public Prosecutor's accusation was made known in September 2020, and the inquiry/investigation focused on the activities carried out by former judges Rui Rangel, Fátima Galante, and Luís Vaz das Neves, who, according to the accusation, used their roles in the Lisbon Court of Appeal to obtain undue advantages for themselves or others.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇵🇹 here.